Financial Times, 13 April 1994, by Andrew St. George.
"'Rope' regains its reputation - Theatre"
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Patrick Hamilton (1904-62) wrote *Rope* in 1929, a 
psychological thriller braided into social comedy, taut and 
tense at the close. Hitchcock's bad 1948 film damaged the 
play, but not so Keith Baxter's excellent revival, now at 
Wyndhams Theatre after opening at the Chichester Festival 
last year.

From the crashing discords and complete darkness, the play 
makes compulsive viewing. Stage time and theatre time are 
identical. Hamilton gives us two and a half hours in the 
life of two Oxford undergraduates, Brandon and Granillo, 
who have just murdered their friend Ronald. The opening--
three naked men, one dead--gives way to a wonderful scene 
in total darkness, the actors detected only by their 
glowing cigarettes. It has the nerviness of *Macbeth*, 
post-Duncan, and the scariness of *Psycho*, pre-shower.

The murder is a crime of vanity. Brandon and Granillo hide 
the body in a chest, throw a tablecloth over it, and invite 
the victim's father, aunt and assorted friends to dinner: 
"You sit at the head." But Rupert, a louche free-thinking 
poet, begins to suspect. Before Brandon and Granillo can 
make off to Oxford with the body, Rupert confronts them, 
and wrings a confession. Will the free thinker enjoy the 
thrill of a healthy crime, too? Will he blow the whistle?

Hamilton's writing is everywhere poised, the stage 
directions punctilious: "He responds vaguely, as one who 
has only half understood." But he also makes psychological 
sense of the "foul, lewd and infamous jest," like a good 
Jacobean horror. The play moves the thriller genre into 
drama, but does so by avoiding the whodunit mystery 
formula, because the murderers are flaunting their crime. 
Here, every word comes out of the dramatic situation on 
stage.

The direction (Keith Baxter) serves the purpose exactly. 
Each time new information arrives, the situation and 
therefore the characters change. Simon Higglet's set, 
skewed and twisted, keeps the intimacy of the original 
three- sided production at Chichester; at the Wyndhams, real 
life  comes and goes through the door at the back of the 
stage,  making the rest of the theatre into a big 
conspiracy. The  subtle lighting (Bill Bray) changes only 
when the actors  change it. The acting of the three 
principals keeps to the  changing subtleties of Hamilton's 
plot. They maintain a  delicate triangle of power, passion 
and guilt. Tristan  Gemmill as Brandon finds bluster and 
assertiveness in the  character, while the surlier Granillo 
(James Buller) drinks  his way into a crisis of nerve. 

Anthony Head as Rupert is all fancy and frolic, a cynical 
creature already world-weary and bored, but witty enough to 
know it. On the ten commandments: "Of course I honour my 
parents. I send them a telegram of congratulations each 
year on my birthday." The murderers will hang on his word. 
His is decadence forced into moral standards by a specific 
case. Head hs this character pinned down: fiddling, 
twitching, clumsy at dinner but deft in conversation.

Around him the rest of the cast twitter through the dinner 
party and leave when they should. Richard Warwick as the 
victim's father add gravitas while Dawn Keeler as his aunt 
removes it. In all,  a fine ensemble performance, and a 
reminder that Hamilton's reputation--he wrote *Gaslight* 
and *Hangover Square*--should hang on more than *Rope.*

At the Wyndhams Theatre.



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